


pretend this isn’t bleeding

by ghost_teeth



Category: Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: F/F, F/M, Masquerade Ball, Mourning, really depressing oral
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-24
Updated: 2017-04-24
Packaged: 2018-10-23 06:51:39
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,780
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10714401
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ghost_teeth/pseuds/ghost_teeth
Summary: For the first time in perhaps ten years, Vivienne considers withdrawing from a party for a breath of fresh air.





	pretend this isn’t bleeding

**Author's Note:**

> written for a masquerade ball prompt

By nightfall, Skyhold is a riot of sound and color. Brilliant banners stream from every tower and rampart while garishly clad party guests swarm the grounds like a plague of itinerant butterflies. Music drifts over the din of a thousand chattering voices, and not a single face is visible in the crowd.

If nothing else, Vivienne muses into her wine, the masquerade ball—Lady Montiliyet’s pet project of the last six months—will be the talk of both Orlesian and Fereldan nobility for the next twenty years. In the past hour alone she has witnessed two noble houses unite, one dissolve, and at least eight ostensibly-secret-yet-tastefully-conspicuous extramarital trysts.

Looking out over the colorful assembly, Vivienne feels a whisper of something not unlike homesickness. Masks of every conceivable color and shape glint up at her from below, and the assembled finery might outshine even the most extravagant Winter Palace gathering. But unlike grand Orlesian revelries, there is something fresh about this party, something vital and charged and alive. The fortress itself might have something to do with it—the long-untended greenery and the unspeakably ancient stones lend a certain thrilling wildness to the ambience.

With a strange pang, Vivienne wonders if perhaps it is not Val Royeaux that she misses, but the last time she tasted an atmosphere like this. She can recall all too vividly the electric skitter of her nerves in the face of unaccustomed grandeur, the joyous wobble of her green heart at her first invitation to dance.

For the first time in perhaps ten years, Vivienne considers withdrawing from a party for a breath of fresh air. Everything feels so close tonight, too real and immediate. All of her usual greeting and charming seems to take so much more effort than usual.

There is a sudden touch at her elbow, just a feather-light brush of fingertips. Vivienne turns, prepared with a smile and a _good evening_ (with a certain edge of threat, for whoever would dare touch her so casually).

The interloper is a woman, sleek in a lustrous storm-gray suit and masked to the tip of her nose, leaving only thin, unrouged lips uncovered. She is half-bowing, unsmiling, one hand extended to Vivienne—although she is silent, the invitation is clear.

Without knowing quite why, instead of offering her prepared pleasantries, Vivienne finds herself placing her own gloved hand in the woman’s, mirroring her silence. It’s a strange night. She’s in a mood to do strange things.

The woman in gray leads Vivienne through the press of bodies to an empty space on the dance floor just as the musicians begin a new number, low and heady. Vivienne lays her hand on the woman’s shoulder and allows her to lead them into a waltz.

The woman’s right hand is ungloved and rough, callouses catching on the fine silk of Vivienne’s glove. Powerful, broad hands, made for the hilt of a sword. Vivienne might almost imagine they belong to someone else: a man, perhaps, young again and strong. She might almost imagine that the eyes appraising her from the shadow of the mask are a beloved pale silver.

Vivienne notices distantly that she is clutching the weathered hand in hers too tight, but she can’t bring herself to care tonight. This is a night of masks, after all, and there is safety in anonymity.

The waltz is unstylish and inelegant but it is exhilarating, full of swoops and sudden turns. This is the sort of dance a man only recently returned to court after a wild youth might favor—years out of date and not entirely proper. It is so like the way Bastien danced with her all night at that Wintersend Ball so many years ago that Vivienne feels her heart clench terribly.

As the woman whirls her around the floor, Vivienne almost feels like that girl of nineteen again, all fluttering pulse and poorly-masked excitement. She almost thinks she might weep, or laugh. She wonders how many glasses of wine she’s had tonight.

She wonders if she knows this woman.

She wonders if she cares.

The song ends abruptly, just as Vivienne thinks she can hardly handle any more. The woman removes her broad hand from Vivienne’s waist and steps back, beginning to bend her neck in a quick bow.

Vivienne’s fingers clamp around the woman’s hand before she can let go.

She stares at her own hand, astonished. She did not mean to seize the woman’s fingers, but she cannot make herself let go. The woman does not try to pull away. She stands there, patient and rock-steady, waiting for whatever comes next.

Vivienne does not look into the woman’s masked face, does not say _please, please_. Instead, she leads her silently by the hand from the dance floor and back through the crowd. She does not stop to wonder if anyone is watching them go. She leads them past guards and up a staircase that she does not quite recognize, and finally outside onto a blessedly cool and empty balcony.

Before her dance partner can say anything and break the spell, Vivienne presses the fingers of her free hand to the woman’s mouth.

The woman nods, understanding. There will be no voices tonight, no faces.

Vivienne lifts the hand in hers to her face, presses her cheek into it. The roughness of it is comfortable, and they stand there in silence like that for a while, just breathing.

After a long moment, the woman moves her lips against the hand on her mouth softly, insistent. Vivienne sighs, moves her hand down to frame the woman’s chin, but does not draw her in for a kiss. Instead, she slides her hand around to the back of the woman’s head and pulls until the woman’s face is nestled in the junction of Vivienne’s neck and shoulder. The woman obligingly peppers Vivienne’s collar with slow, dry kisses and kittenish flickers of tongue—enough to goosebump her skin, but not meant to leave a mark.

Vivienne is not feeling nearly so polite. Her searching hands find the pins holding back the woman’s hair and deftly remove them one by one until dark curls tumble around the woman’s mask. She pushes her fingers into the woman’s hair—thick and endless—and seizes fistfuls of it at the root, hard. The woman’s breath stutters quietly, but she makes no other sound. Vivienne pulls harder.

They are moving backward, slowly, toward a bench near the railing, Vivienne drawing the woman along with her hair as a rein. Finally, the backs of Vivienne’s knees meet the bench, and she pulls the woman’s head back. The woman’s lips glisten wetly in the meager moonlight, and Vivienne leans in to kiss them just once, softly—a peace offering more than anything. Then she sinks onto the bench, pulling the woman down, down, until she is on her knees at Vivienne’s feet. The woman goes quietly, pliant and obedient, hands trailing down the front of Vivienne’s magnificent masquerade gown.

(Where the right hand is bare, the left is gloved, and Vivienne does not think about it.)

Vivienne’s hands find the woman’s hair again as the woman lifts the layers of frothy tulle and silk, hitching them to Vivienne’s waist. Vivienne lets her legs fall open, and the woman places one wet, open-mouthed kiss to the inside of Vivienne’s thigh, achingly slow, then another, higher. It’s all very pretty, very kind, and Vivienne finds it turns her stomach.

She fists her hands in the woman’s hair hard enough to pull some strands free and jerks her face where she most wants it. The woman does not object. She mouths Vivienne through the thin silk of her moistening underthings for a brief and tantalizing moment before pulling them aside.

Vivienne lets her head fall back, breath loud in her ears as the woman drags the flat of her tongue up in a lazy line. It’s too slow, too familiar, too much like a lover. Vivienne digs her long nails into the woman’s scalp and stares at the starry sky, anywhere but at the woman between her legs. If she focuses on something else, she can almost pretend that it is someone else’s mouth, someone else’s scarred hands.

She can almost pretend that she doesn’t recognize this dark hair, this scar running the length of the woman’s scalp, that she doesn’t remember the exact arrow that caused it, doesn’t remember healing the gash with her own hands in the aftermath of the battle.

With a cruel jerk, Vivienne pulls the woman’s face harder into the juncture of her legs. The woman (a stranger, Vivienne thinks firmly) seems to understand, and abandons her previous teasing in favor of burying her tongue as deep as she can.

Vivienne is merciless, offering nothing gentle in return, pulling hair with the intent to tear it out, raking nails to draw blood. The woman takes it all, makes no noise of protest, just licks deeper into her, sucks hard. Vivienne wonders vaguely if she might be suffocating the woman. She decides in the same breath that she doesn’t much care.

It’s all too rough, too clumsy. It’s abrupt and unkind. Everything is just this side of too much. It is exactly what Vivienne wants. She’s getting close, hips twitching fitfully, grinding herself into the woman’s mouth. Vivienne opens her mouth, perhaps to shout a name, then stops.

She has no idea what name she was about to cry. Bastien? Someone else?

Suddenly, she yanks the woman’s head away from her and thrusts her away. The woman falls back easily to sit on her heels, waiting for Vivienne’s next move without protest. Vivienne’s breast heaves as she stares at the woman’s blank mask. The chill night air is an unpleasant shock between her splayed legs.

They stare at one another in strange silence for what might be years. Vivienne shifts, closes her legs, but does not bother adjusting her gown.

“Pardon me,” Vivienne says, hearing her own voice as is from a distance. “I think you ought to go, my dear.”

In one smooth motion, Inquisitor Trevelyan stands and bats the dirt from her knees. She retrieves her hairpins from the floor and pockets them. The gloved fingers of her marked left hand come up to rest on Vivienne’s knee, feather-light and gentle and terribly kind.

“Go,” Vivienne says hoarsely. “Please.”

Trevelyan withdraws, raises her ungloved right hand in farewell, and then she is gone without a word.

A breeze rustles the disarrayed tulle of Vivienne’s dress, and she shivers. She pulls her arms in and tucks them around herself.

She will rejoin the party in just a moment, yes.

Just a moment.


End file.
